For starters I was convinced there would be no aubergines, then this happened:

The big butternut squash ripened, but it somehow got bruised so I had to cut it down and cook the undamaged bit. There were lots of small fruits that never made it to the flowering stage, then the plant decided to throw out seven healthy looking buds – I knew there was no hope of them all ripening, one would be a miracle at this stage, so I nipped four of them out last month and hand pollinated the remaining three to see if anything grew.

The Japanese onion squash (red kuri) had the same problem of fruit buds going yellow and not opening, so only one pumpkin grew on each vine. I’ve cut them today and put them on a windowsill indoors to start the ripening process, where the skin thickens and the flavour sweetens.

Both buckets of beans were still flowering in late September, but I think we’ve had the last proper serving out of them now.

The courgettes are still going, although they’ve had a bit of downy mildew (more about this another time). I’m hoping we might get one more to grow into a marrow, but we’ll see.

The crookneck squash plants are doing well…

… so are the cucumbers, after some hand pollination to make up for their well-hidden female flowers and lack of male flowers.

The tomatoes are still a law unto themselves, so I’ve had to cut some of the fruit and put it in the sunniest spot of the garden to see if more of it will ripen. Unfortunately it does look like blight has set in to a couple of plants in the last three or four days, but our neighbours have had it for several weeks already so all things considered maybe we had a good run here compared to most.

I’ll be writing about autumn garden tasks and planting soon, and catching up with the windowsill kitchen garden too. Might have to do a short series about garden pests and diseases as well, if there’s time.

How’s your garden growing? Are you thinking ahead to next year yet?

Lots of overwintering herbs, salads and greens are sprouting away in the mini greenhouse, which is doing its job really well, and will eventually provide some overspill space for any windowsill plants that get too big for their boots in late Spring.

Today I’ve been digging, lugging bags of compost around and doing one batch of planting. Late February seems to be a good time around here for planting Early Onward and Sugarsnap peas, including a few extra ones to eat as pea shoots in March and April salads.

These have both been grown in pots, and I’ve sown a variety of different radish seeds in between the peas as a catch crop, plus some winter-hardy lettuces to add ‘living mulch’ and help keep the soil moist. The three different plants are traditionally thought to grow happily together, and my gardening experience last year seemed to bear this out.

I’ve been keeping a close eye on the budget for the year, and it’s going OK so far:

• The £10 for seeds has all gone now. If I need anything else it’s going to involve bartering or swapping. Or asking nicely for a few Sunshine F1 kabocha squash seeds for my birthday – hint hint, Beau. Subtle, huh? *cough*

• My £20 compost budget has gone too. I managed to find a special offer on some nice peat-free organic compost at Harrod Horticultural, plus a voucher code and some cashback. Managed to get 250 litres of the good stuff, very pleased.

• The remaining £10 for ‘general garden stuff’ has had £4 spent so far. I used £2 to get some extra-long garden canes so I could grow French, runner and borlotto beans on wigwams, and a few extra to train climbing squash plants up. Another £2 went on some heavy duty weed fabric. This is partly to keep weeds down in the raised beds, but mainly it’s a last ditch attempt to stop M-Cat digging every living thing in the ground up (and crapping on it as the final insult).

• What’s left? There’s only £6 to go for the rest of the growing season. I have plenty of pots, bird-scarers and supports, so all that’s really needed is a little fertiliser and some tomato food. Nipping out later to get a packet of Growmore granules from Poundland. Rock and roll. Woo.

I’m going for a very low maintenance, high-yield bunch of crops this year, and have been looking into all sorts of ways to stop the soil in pots drying out. I now have various water reservoirs, recycled heavy duty plastic soil covers and living mulches sorted out, and am looking forward to lots of healthy eating and not too much associated faffing about.

Edited to add: now spent the last few quid on some Growmore to rake into the soil and prepare it for planting in a few weeks, plus enough vegetable and tomato feed to last until the Autumn. Hoping to keep the garden pesticide free, and will be planting some of the three packets of wildlife-friendly seeds I’ve kindly been given to encourage lots of pollination and natural pest control.

Are you growing your own this year? What are you growing? Do you have any tips for low maintenance (but cheap) gardening? Please let me know!

Many problems can be overcome by chucking expensive chemicals at them, but it isn’t a guaranteed fix and you wouldn’t necessarily want to eat your veggies afterwards.

Let’s start with a little ‘murder mystery’, shall we? Look at the picture below and guess what disease or creature caused this damage to this sprouting broccoli plant.

Competition: The first correct ‘Diagnosis Murder’ answer left in the comments section below will win a mini-collection of vegetable seeds suitable for growing in a small garden. (UK entrants only). The answer will be revealed on Friday morning so you’ll need to be quick.

The garden has been very productive for the most part, but there have been problems with animals of all sizes:

• pets (not all of them mine)
• ants
• blackfly and other aphids
• slugs and snails
• foxes
• assorted birds
• butterflies and moths
• beet leaf miners
• wasps

Amazingly there was no carrot root fly, but that’s probably because I did some companion planting and stuck to the rules about thinning and harvesting. I’ll write about those on another occasion.

Plus there have been problems with diseases, mainly:

• Downy mildew
• Rust
• Mosaic virus
• General stem rot

The one thing I was most worried about was blight, but the area I live in escaped somehow so we ended up with strong and healthy tomato and potato plants. That could have been because we had some long hot stretches over the summer, or it could have been blind luck.

I’ll be writing about all kinds of garden pests and diseases – and how to cheaply stop them destroying all your crops – over the next few weeks, as the gardening year starts to take shape. On Friday I’ll begin by tackling our mystery ‘friend’ from the crime scene above.

Have you had problems with any garden pests or diseases? Did you manage to deal with them without using harsh chemicals? Any tips for other growers?

Bon appetit! What will I be looking out for at the market?

Fruit: apples, bilberries, blackberries, blueberries, damsons, elderberries, figs, grapes, greengages, juniper berries, Kentish cobnuts, loganberries, pears, plums, raspberries, sloes. Imported melons, nectarines and peaches.

Vegetables: all salad leaves, asian greens, aubergines, beetroot, broccoli, late summer cauliflower, celery, chillies, chives, courgettes, cucumbers, fennel, globe artichokes, green beans (French and runner), green and red cabbage, horseradish, kale, kohlrabi, leeks, marrows, peppers, pumpkins and squashes, radishes, red onions, rocket, salsify and scorzonera, samphire, shallots, sorrel, spinach, spring onions, swedes, sweetcorn, summer squash, tomatoes, watercress, wild mushrooms (ceps, chanterelles, oyster, puffball, shaggy ink cap and more).

Fish and shellfish: black bream, brown and rainbow trout, brown hen crabs, brown shrimp, clams, Dover sole, eels, lobster, mussels, native oysters, pilchards, plaice, prawns, scallops, sea bass, signal crayfish, skate, sprats, squid, turbot.

Meat, poultry and game: Michaelmas goose, Autumn lamb, grouse, partridge, venison at its best, wild duck.

Cheeses: Double Gloucester, Farmhouse Cheshire. Brie de Meaux.

I think I’m going to have a go at making some baked marrow or squash this week. I’m leaving a couple of courgettes to grow into marrows in the back garden, so fingers crossed they’ll be ready soon. And I’m also going to grab a big slice of Brie de Meaux to have in baguettes or in a baked fondue. Mmmmmm, tasty!

What are you going to cook?

There’s still a lot growing on the windowsills, including cherry (Garden Pearl) and plum tomatoes, sweet Genovese basil, baby leaf spinach, rocket and land cress. I was told that all the tomatoes would ripen at the same time with these varieties, but instead we’ve had plenty of fruits each week and there are still flowers here and there as well. That’s much better for a kitchen garden, as it’s better to try for a continuous supply of fresh produce rather than a glut that needs using up or preserving.

I think next year I’ll be less lazy with what I grow and have some cordon type toms, instead of the bushy types. Longer growing seasons and higher yields should make better use of the limited space, even if they aren’t the sort of plants you can chuck in a pot and forget about.

The windowsill is warm, sunny and pest free, which is handy for most plants. The garden has had lots of problems with beet leaf miners which have ruined most of the outdoor spinach, leaf beet and chard, but baby leaf spinach is just fine on the sill. The dwarf beans are happy here too, away from this year’s swarms of greenfly, and still flowering and making full sized french beans every few days.

The windowsill herbs here are mint and parsley, and they’re doing fine. No need to spend stupid amounts of money for very little at the supermarket…

Most of the pots had to be moved outside in the end. There’s almost no topsoil here, but they’re doing OK on the decking. Here we have different types of basil, lemon balm, marjoram, a cucumber plant, autumn sprouting calabrese, thyme and some toms with an incredible amount of fruit on them. There are some mixed wild flowers in there too, to get bees to pollinate the plants, and to attract hoverflies to eat garden pests.

I’m experimenting with some more unusual foodie flavours I’ve never grown before, including giant red mustard, sorrel, russian tarragon, salad burnet and golden purslane. To keep a regular supply of the things we eat the most, I’ve also been sowing a few seeds of parsley, radishes, stubby carrots, coriander and spring onions every couple of weeks in small pots. Very easy to throw together and it really keeps the grocery bills down because you don’t run out of your favourites.

This looks like a raised bed, but it’s just more knackered decking with the wood taken off the top and the rubble removed, plus some cheap compost chucked in. This monster below is white sprouting broccoli, and it’s basically the only thing that the cat hasn’t dug up (I suspect it secretly threatens to eat the cat when I’m not listening). Thanks to my be-clawed ‘little helper’, the almost-raised bed hasn’t been much of a success and the only way it’s going to work is if I plant things in it that are already pretty large. I’ve been growing a few things in modules in the mini-greenhouse so let’s see how the next batch of plants get on.

The front of the decking has an older cucumber plant with some salad leaves at the base, the non-stop courgette plant and some almost-ready salad potatoes. They have all done me proud and been very easy to grow with hardly any care needed.

The back of the decking is where I got a little over-confident, with some sweetcorn, a butternut squash plant and all kinds of beans growing up the trellis (which saved on buying canes). Take it from me, sweetcorn and Hunter squash are not ideal for most small gardens – they’re nutrient hungry and low yield, and thirsty. Don’t try this at home. But the seeds were free and if it all goes to plan they will probably be delicious. To get the best yield from sweetcorn you have to plant it in clumps rather than rows, there are 12 in this picture.

The sweetcorn variety is a new one that grows about 4 to 6 mini sweetcorn per plant, but if you miss the baby corn stage, unlike some others, it goes on to give you a couple of nice fat corn cobs per plant as well. Sounds too good to be true, and it is – to get the baby sweetcorn out you practically have to rip the plants to pieces so although they were tasty I am letting the rest of them become full sized cobs.

Hardly any beans so far - a late frost got half of the first lot and karate kitty got the second lot. Thanks kitty. The borlotto beans are the only variety outdoors to produce anything edible to date. Fingers crossed for the rest of them, which were a late sowing.

There are a few crappy old windowboxes left behind by the previous owners, and these are now filled with herbs, various salad leaves, beetroot, mini-cabbages, fennel, and a few other goodies. There are also some marigolds to cheer the place up and bring in the bees/scare off pests.

The hanging salad baskets have grown a lot of food from very little compost, including red and green salad bowl lettuce, herbs, radiccio, juicy spring onions, and Tom Thumb lettuces. This one also has edible flowers which allegedly double up as pest control (marigold and nasturtium) but I like the splash of colour as well.

That’s all from the garden for the time being. What have you been growing? Any success stories?